Cover Your Tracks

by Daco Auffenorde

  Waving off her apology, he helped her take the final steps to the base of the stairs. At the landing, she looked up and took a satisfied breath. Almost there. When they ascended the last steps up and she was standing on the stoop, she wanted to throw her arms around the tower and hug it. Instead, she clung to Nick, who stiffened for a moment but then patted her back.

  “Be cool,” he said. “Don’t move.” He disengaged and tried the door. It was locked, but in a matter of moments he jimmied it open.

  “Thank God,” she said as she crossed the threshold. “So worth the climb.” Relief washed over her body. Safety at last when it seemed so impossibly near and yet far away. If ever there were an oxymoron, she’d just lived through one. Now in the arms of this watchtower, it felt as if they’d been adrift on the ocean in a dinghy and had somehow stumbled upon an island with fresh water and lush tropical fruit trees. Heaven.

  “Let’s get upstairs,” he said. “It’ll be very dark once I close the door, so grab the railing. Take baby steps.”

  As soon as he closed the door, any light from outside was gone. Fortunately, though the torch had become faint, its dying light was enough to cast a glimmer on the stone staircase. Standing still a moment, gripping the arm rail, she all at once realized that the wind was no longer slapping her in the face. She’d become so accustomed to its insult that she’d forgotten what calm air was like. What a contrast to her sailing days, when she looked forward to that warm breeze flowing through her hair and across her face, caressing her skin with an almost sensuous touch. Now, the cold, still air inside this tower was just as comforting.

  “I hope there’s a generator,” she said and then half-stumbled on the first step.

  “Be careful, Margo!”

  She raised a hand in apology.

  When they reached the top floor, she was amazed. The moonlight streaming through the windows cast a silver glow throughout the room, bright enough to allow her to make out the furnishings. The large one-room apartment had a table in its center, on which was mounted a map of the area and a sky watcher’s chart. A small kitchenette was located near one wall. On the other walls were a narrow table and two chairs, an extra-long twin bed, and a thin mattress with no covers atop it. Best of all, there was a wood stove in the corner of the room.

  Nick began looking around. “No wood up here. I’ll go downstairs and see if there’s some. Sit down so you don’t fall over anything.” He limped away. He hadn’t limped like that before he’d fallen near the entrance a few minutes earlier.

  She sat in a chair and looked out the window. No sign of civilization, not a trace of humanity anywhere in sight. Just mountains and snow-covered trees cast against the dark-gray night sky. So this was what true isolation felt like. It wasn’t long before she heard Nick coming up the stairs. As he rounded the bend, the red light from the torch glowed and flickered inside the room, the contrast between its light and the size of Nick’s shadow a little intimidating. When he reached the top floor, he was carrying a couple of logs tucked under one of his arms.

  “We’re in luck,” he said. “We have enough for the evening. Tomorrow, I’ll have to head out for more. This won’t be enough if we’re stranded for more than a day or two.”

  “What do you mean a day or two? There must be a communications device in here, a two-way radio. We can call for help. How else would a lookout watcher be able to call in a fire?”

  “It’s winter. The park service wouldn’t leave anything like that up here. They don’t want to encourage thieves.”

  He couldn’t be serious.

  “You’re safe, for the time being.” His eyes bore into hers. “Why can’t you settle for that, Margo?”

  Sure, they were safer than they’d been since this nightmare began. But this was still a nightmare, and like all nightmares, she just wanted this one to end. “If we can find a way out of here right away that’s what we should do. Why would you balk at that?”

  His glower was so intense that she turned away. She could never predict what would irritate him.

  Margo hated settling. It never worked out. She’d had plenty of past experiences with that. Matt for one. She tried settling for Matt, even when he said he didn’t want kids. She didn’t rescind her agreement to marry him that day he’d proposed, so, officially, they were engaged. And for a while, they seemed to be doing okay at treading water. Their jobs filled most of their waking hours, and when they were together they didn’t talk about the children issue. She hoped if they stayed close, he would change his mind without her goading him. Then, on a brisk but sunny afternoon in late May, they set out sailing on his new boat. She lay back sunning herself as he maneuvered the boat’s sheet. The leading edge of the luff began to flutter slightly in and out, so he pulled the sheet in just enough for the fluttering to stop. He was a natural at trimming the sail, and he constantly toyed with it. Then he joined her, and together they enjoyed the warm air gliding across their faces. That day with Matt, she thought of her father and how he talked about the harmony he felt inside when he would take cross-country ski trips. She’d found the same joy sailing with Matt.

  Perhaps because she was in the warm, comforting sun, or perhaps because of the effects of the beer, she blurted out, “Did I ever tell you I caught my father fucking one of his grad students?”

  “Wow, no,” Matt replied.

  “It was horrible. Still is horrible to think about. I actually caught them screwing in our old station wagon. In a parking lot. I was sixteen. It still gives me the creeps.”

  “That was a long time ago. Your parents are still married, and from what I can tell, quite happy with their lives. I guess your mom forgave him.”

  Margo brushed away a strand of hair and adjusted her sunglasses. “My mother never knew.”

  “Good that you didn’t tell her.”

  “I hated my father, and don’t kid yourself, I really wanted to tell my mother. So many times I almost did. But she was so good, so kind. I could never hurt her.”

  “People are human, Margo. Affairs happen. Now it’s only ancient history, as if it never happened, meant nothing. Probably did mean nothing. Have you been obsessing about this all these years? What a burden. You should let it go for your own peace of mind.”

  “That’s an insensitive thing to say. I was a kid, and I had to …” My God, her father’s sin of adultery had resurfaced as a blight on her own life. She couldn’t forgive her father. She’d reacted to his indiscretion by becoming indiscreet herself, and she’d ended up pregnant. Yes, they were human. But that didn’t erase the pain of the past, nor the hurtful emotions she secretly carried all these years. She’d learned to co-exist with her father’s sin. When she became an adult, she understood that all people made mistakes, and as an adult one had to get past not only their own but also other people’s foibles. But for Matt to dismiss her emotions as petty or obsessive felt like a betrayal. He should’ve been the one person who listened, who understood.

  The wind shifted, and the sail began to flutter and the boat to rock.

  “I’ve got to adjust the line. Watch the boom.” He deftly adjusted the lines, and they were back to smooth sailing.

  She couldn’t shake her anger. She was deeply wounded by his lack of sensitivity, but she didn’t purse it. Maybe Matt was right. Let it go, she thought. Let everything in the past go.

  When he returned, he sat beside her. Once, he would’ve kissed her. They no longer kissed passionately the way they used to, not even when they were making love.

  The sun blazed hotter, and she began to sweat. But was it the sun? The alcohol? She sat up and took a couple of beers out of the cooler. They drank and watched the clouds float by. They used to like to create imaginary pictures and laugh about what they were seeing—stupid talk, silly games. Where had all that gone? Now, they struggled to make conversation, and the silence felt awkward, like two strangers with nothing in common. They must’ve lain this way for over an hour, because the colors in the sky were now beginning to change. />
  “Where are we on having a family?” she asked. “Children.”

  He shifted his weight. “Nothing’s changed given where we are in our relationship.”

  “What do you mean, ‘where we …’” Then it hit her. She sat up. “Are you having an affair, Matt?”

  He hesitated, then wrinkled his brow—the analytical doctor’s look. The wind swept his hair from his face as though blowing away a mask of deceit.

  “Are you?” she repeated.

  “Margo, you’re only projecting what you told me about your father.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  He inhaled, then looked at her with a combination of sadness and resolve. “What do you want me to say? The important thing is that I love you. We just have to, you know, work on …”

  The undersides of her eyelids flashed scarlet. She grabbed her stomach and retched. She wished she’d thrown up on him. “You’re an asshole!” she hollered. She wanted to ask who the woman was, wanted to cry, wanted to shove him overboard, but she did none of that. She turned away and looked out at the horizon and rippling blue water.

  “I never see you,” he said. “You’re always working. Do you realize we saw each other only one evening last month? One evening. And you didn’t even stay the night. Some excuse about having to be to at work in the morning. That never stopped you from staying over in the past.”

  She stood and went to the railing. She turned back and glared at him. “You think the best defense is a good offense? Fuck you, Matt.”

  He folded his arms high across his chest. “Frankly, I” He caught himself.

  “Go on, say it.”

  “I wondered if you were seeing someone else.”

  She laughed bitterly. “I never cheated on you. I was out of town a lot last month, and at work, and—”

  “Exactly.”

  “No, not exactly. I did not cheat on you. It never occurred to me.” She tugged at the ring on her finger, not knowing whether she would give it back to him or throw it overboard. But her finger was swollen from the heat, and her sailing chores and the beers, so she couldn’t get the ring off.

  Only then did he soften, his stoic defensiveness crumbling like a child’s fortress made of sand. “Please, Margo. Forgive me. It was a mistake, meaningless. You’re the woman I want to marry, to spend the rest of my life with. We work, you and I.”

  She shook her head. “Not anymore.” She turned her back on him and moved as far away as the boat’s size would allow.

  Later, Matt married the woman he cheated with—an intern at his hospital. Now, they had an eight-month-old son. It made no sense. She’d always wondered whether things would’ve been different for them if she’d told him sooner about her father and how it had affected her, and about the baby that was taken from her. Perhaps Matt would’ve understood her better. Perhaps not. It was ancient history now.

  CHAPTER 30

  Margo sat watching Nick as he started a fire in the wood stove. This was the first real opportunity that she’d had to study him without fear of running from more danger. When the flames brightened the interior of the space, she saw that his face was mottled with patches of deep crimson and pure white. The ice in his disheveled hair was beginning to melt, and water droplets were forming at the top of his forehead. He hadn’t complained once about being cold, but with only a short collar and no hood on his coat, he was obviously suffering from exposure to the frigid temperatures. His hands were patchy with red and white spots. Had he not kept his hands in his coat pockets or beneath his sleeves, his fingers would surely be frostbitten. Maybe they were, and he was hiding it. While the stove heated up, he found a large pail in a closet on the first floor, went outside, and returned with a bucketful of snow. He put the snow in a pan, boiled it on the stove, and searched through the kitchen cabinets.

  When the water cooled, he handed her a filled glass. “Drink.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I will, but my stomach is in knots.”

  He wasn’t taking no for an answer, so she accepted the glass and drank. Nothing in the world compared to fresh water and its healing properties.

  He worked diligently, focused and taciturn, not seeming to care if she watched him or not. There was nothing self-conscious about the man. It was already a foregone conclusion that he expected her to remain in step with him, to do as he commanded. The military had taught him well, but there was more than that. He was a self-made man who relied on no one except himself. Everything he did was part of a larger plan; nothing was random or wasteful. His organizational skills comforted her, felt familiar. In a way he reminded her of a surgeon preparing for a major operation.

  She looked away from him and out the window. Her mind wandered down that dark lane again, playing its games, taunting her. If the snow continued to accumulate, they might find themselves stuck in this tower—a death trap. Nick must’ve realized that before they headed up the mountain. No one would ever think to look for them at a tower. When rescue workers weren’t able to locate the remains of their bodies with the other people listed as passengers on the train, what would the authorities think? That they were buried somewhere deep in the snow, somewhere inaccessible? That would mean that the rescuers would give up all search efforts until spring when the snow melted.

  Margo’s insides felt hollow. She didn’t want to continue to think negatively, but she couldn’t control her dark thoughts. What if she was missing something? What if Nick had some ulterior motive for insisting that she come up the mountain? She glanced at him and then back out the window. He didn’t appear insane or suicidal, and yet how could she know what was inside his mind? Her idea of going down the mountain, not up into the remote wilderness, still seemed the more rational choice. Maybe Nick had lied about the leopard. What if he was a serial killer and she was his target? He knew how to kill, had done that for a living. Did he want to torture her, cut the baby from her belly, and kill them both?

  The acid rose in her throat. She shook her head, trying to dispel these weird and horrid thoughts. One minute she was comforted by him, the next she was questioning whether she could trust him. They were strangers, true, and though he’d saved her life, she couldn’t just disregard her own instinct, surrender herself to him as his prisoner or foot soldier. She clamped her eyes shut. It was only the cold affecting her, messing with her mind. If Nick were more personable, more conversant, she wouldn’t be this paranoid.

  Within the hour, the small room began to feel toasty, and he said, “You should rest, Margo.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been good company,” she said.

  “You’re not here to entertain me. You need to rest.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  She met his eyes. There was no maybe about it. She’d been ordered to rest. She removed her coat, and for the first time since she got on the train a few days ago, she lay down on a bed and felt real warmth.

  Her mind cleared. Peace finally. That proved short lived when thoughts of her family intruded. What would they think when they learned the train was missing? Would they give up hope? Would they be glad she was dead, out of their way?

  Her stomach growled. They had to eat, but the pheasant was gone. Nick couldn’t forage in the forest again until tomorrow. She closed her eyes. She could think only of food, a steak-and-baked-potato dinner. Like counting backward from one hundred, she began preparing the meal in her mind and fell into a deep sleep.

  Sometime later—five minutes, an hour, two hours—she emerged from slumber. Her mouth was as dry as baked clay. She opened her eyes and felt a strange weight on her. To her surprise, Nick was lying beside her. Of course he had to sleep on the bed. She couldn’t expect him to sleep on the floor. But how they were lying was dumbfounding. Once again, he had his arm wrapped around her belly. She tensed, her first real movement since she woke.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Did she wake him, or had he been awake all this time? She couldn’t tell by his voice and wasn’t abo
ut to ask. She licked her lips and tried to swallow. “I’m so thirsty,” she replied. “I can’t swallow.”

  Without another word, he rose and moved toward the kitchenette. He returned with a pan, not a glass. “Drink, slowly.”

  She pushed up and took small sips, though the urge to gulp was almost irresistible. But she didn’t want to vomit. When he returned the pan to the kitchen, she fell back to the mattress, and the next thing she knew, light was streaming in through the windows and dancing in her eyes. Nick’s body was no longer pressed against hers. His arm was no longer wrapped around her stomach, nor was his hand pressing against the baby. He was gone and not upstairs. There was no sound indicating that he was downstairs.

  She pushed her body upright and sat on the side of the bed. Odd how one could sense another person’s presence even when that person remained silent and sat perfectly still. That was silence. But it was nothing like the silence of being in a room devoid of another person. That was deafening silence.

  To be sure he was gone, she called out, “Hello, Nick?”

  No response.

  “Nick,” she cried louder. “Are you down there?”

  She sat for a while, looking out the windows and taking in the panoramic view while listening to the undulating beat of the wind striking against the tower. The tower was surrounded by mountains and valleys seeded with evergreen forests that sparkled like diamonds. The sky was dotted with white rippling clouds. At the eastern edge, the sun was beginning to rise, casting off faint hues of orange and red. A beautiful sight to behold indeed, but so very dangerous.

  Margo had been a city girl for so long that she’d forgotten the beauty of nature, except for what she saw through the eyes of the children she treated. The young looked at life through pristine eyes. They believed in fairy tales, and some did even to the end of their days. It was that magic that pushed Margo to try harder, to be a better doctor. Sometimes very sick children became mature beyond their years, comforting their parents. No child should be cast into an adult role. Margo understood that all too well. She’d had to grow up much sooner than she should have. She’d come to understand that her firstborn child, Olivia, wasn’t a mistake; she was a gift. A gift stolen from Margo and given to her sister.